This year, the 36-hour coding session competition will go international, with participation again expected to exceed 1,200 attendees and attracting developers from Israel and Poland.

The event – which will take place from Jan. 17-19 – will be held at The Qube in Detroit, the first MHacks held off of the University of Michigan’s campus.

Lucy Zhao is the chief development officer with the executive team at MPowered, the group that hosts MHack. Zhao said they made the decision to have MHacks III in Detroit because they wanted to bring the even more worldwide notoriety and give the city a chance to show that it is a hub for technological advancements.

“We are constantly trying to improve the hackathon model,” she said.

“Detroit’s a big part of the Ann Arbor community and the U-M community, and we wanted to show the rest of the country that Detroit’s more than bankruptcy headlines and that there is an emerging tech scene there.”

The hackathon serves as an event where computer programmers come together with new ideas and build a prototype company or product. Students team up in groups of two to four and spend 36 hours straight designing and coding their “hacks” that can range from building new websites to designing mobile apps, and even building functional robots.

“The whole point of a hackathon is for students to create a project in a super high-energy atmosphere, and it seems like people are really into the trend of developing smart products,” Zhao said.

“By putting a short deadline on a project, people can hit a level of productivity that can yield very impressive results.”

A number of the nation’s top technology companies will have engineers on hand to help mentor students through seminars, and to identify potential talent for future hiring. Apple, Bloomberg,
A16Z, Yahoo and Pinterest are expected to have representatives at the MHacks event.

Zhou said the MHacks atmosphere will be something like a scene from a movie, with students huddled around computers and desks, empty cans of Red Bull strewn about on desks, and people sleeping –or not – in every available corner of the crowded room.

Past winners of MHacks include a team that built a program to sort recyclables from trash based only off of the sound an item makes when hitting the bin.